Long before Peter Dalis stepped on the UCLA campus, the Bruins athletics program was regularly competing for and winning national championships, but the 39 national titles won during his tenure amounted for 45 percent of UCLA’s all-time total at the time of his retirement in June 2002. During his 19-year tenure, the Bruins played in 12 bowl games—winning eight—and played in 15 NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournaments. Needless to say, Dalis continued the excellent tradition of UCLA athletics, and then some.

Next to the athletics success enabled by Dalis’s leadership, the other mark he left on the athletics programs at UCLA are the numerous facility enhancements he oversaw. In August 2002, the Morgan Center was completed, which provided private offices for coaches and administrators, a new academic and counseling center for student-athletes and a new Hall of Fame. Although the groundbreaking didn’t occur until months before his retirement, he spearheaded a $14 million project that doubled the size of the weight room, and added a state-of-the-art medical training facility for student-athletes and new locker rooms and video rooms. When Dalis took the AD job in 1983, the institution did not endow any of its athletics scholarships, but through his vision and leadership, UCLA endowed more than half of its athletics grant-in-aids through private donations at the time of his departure.